Budget Breakdown: Episode 2 - Guest N.S.

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N.S.'s Budget

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Zach Whelchel (00:00)
All right, welcome everyone to budget breakdown. This is the podcast where we get to know our guests through their numbers, through their budget line items, through their financial priorities. So instead of having the guests introduce themselves on our show, I know this is a little weird, we wait and let them introduce themselves at the very end of the show so that we get a chance to get to know them really just through their money. So guests, I'll let you go ahead and say hi, but don't say too much because we want to keep this kind of a mystery.

Nick Smith (00:27)
Okay, hello.

Zach Whelchel (00:29)
All right. So now our listeners at least can hear your voice. so yeah, before the show started, our guests had a chance to submit their budget and we let our guests redact as much of their budget as they want to so that they feel comfortable talking about those numbers. And if you're listening to this on the podcast, there'll be a link in the show notes to view the whole budget on our website. there'll be a full transcript as well, but I've got the budget pulled up right here and we're just going to dive right in and start talking about it. Sound good.

Nick Smith (00:58)
Sounds great. Thanks for having me on the show.

Zach Whelchel (01:00)
Okay, yeah, good to have you. Okay, cool. So I will say that you had a of a different approach to this than our last guest did. So you had quite a few redactions and you also have like things listed in terms of kind of percentages. So tell me about a little bit about like how you hope to kind of talk about your budget today.

Nick Smith (01:20)
Yeah, so my budget is divided into three main category groups. There's one that's called fixed, one that's called flexible, and one that's called non -monthly. And the way we manage our finances is the fixed expenses are things that we have bills to pay or certain payments are going to be paid out of mainly our checking account.

And so they're generally fixed. It includes utilities too, which can be a little bit of variability, but generally it's fixed expenses.

Zach Whelchel (02:00)
Yeah, I noticed that a lot of people will put utilities in like a flexible because they don't know exactly what that amounts can be. But you kind of consider fixed to be just like the things that are going to be pretty much the same. And you know that they're going to happen at a consistent time. looks

Nick Smith (02:14)
That's right. It's also where our money goes first. So before we budget anything in the flexible, we use our paychecks that we've received to be able to make sure that we're funding everything in fixed. So it's also a prioritization as well. Fixed comes first before flexible.

Zach Whelchel (02:33)
Okay, and hear you keep saying we, so I'm assuming you budget with your partner, or how does that

Nick Smith (02:39)
Yes, I have a wife. We've been married for almost nine years. So yes, we budget together.

Zach Whelchel (02:47)
Okay, nine years. That's kind of a hint. I might give us a little hint at your age there a little bit, but it's kind of fun to grab on to these clues as we go and so the listeners can kind of try to learn as much about you as they can. So, okay, so you have a wife, you've been married for a number of years and you guys budget together. So do you do all of your finances together or is there kind of a portion you do together and a portion you do separate? What does that kind of look like in your house?

Nick Smith (03:12)
Yeah, so we have almost all of our income be put into a joint checking account, and then we pay out all of the joint expenses out of that account. So it's almost fully integrated. We each have a very small financial infrastructure for ourselves. So for me, it's savings for gifts or special events, and for her, it's similar. So she holds back a little bit of her paycheck.

And then now you'll see later on that I kind of transfer a little bit to my own savings account. You'll see that in the budget. But generally, we're about 95 % combined.

Zach Whelchel (03:48)
Cool. And then so for those portions that are kind of in separate accounts, that's not represented on this budget. This is just kind of the joint budget

Nick Smith (03:57)
That's correct. So I've been a user of a zero based budgeting software for over seven years and I learned very early on that it can be simpler to have less accounts in the software. So we only have our main checking account and then my savings account and then a couple credit cards. That's it. So we have a whole financial infrastructure that's outside of the software just to kind of simplify the use.

Zach Whelchel (04:25)
Okay, cool. All right, well, let's dive in. So you talked about your category, like structure, your breakdowns. So your first group is like your fixed expenses and you've got a little note here that says that this is about 60 % of your budget. So do you want to talk about these first few ones here? We've got mortgage, utilities, internet, cell phone, anything to share in those?

Nick Smith (04:47)
Yeah, so we have a son and he is currently in daycare. So maybe another hint. And so that is a sizable portion of our expenses currently. And that's one of the main reasons that the fixed expenses are such a high percentage of our overall income. Daycare won't be forever, but for right now, we need to be sure that we are taking that into account. Separately from that,

Zach Whelchel (04:53)
Okay. Okay, cool.

Nick Smith (05:16)
we have a category that's called horse board, which may be interesting to some listeners. So my wife was a championship equestrian when she was in college and growing up. And so we've been fortunate enough to have careers that have presented opportunities for us to be able to pursue some of our passions. And so we do own a horse and he is a lot of fun.

Zach Whelchel (05:21)
Okay, yeah, I saw that down

Nick Smith (05:43)
I enjoy going out myself every once in a while to say hi to the horse. And so that is also part of our fixed expenses. So that includes things like his feed and making sure that he's being taken care of throughout the week. So my wife visits him about two to three times a week. So horse board is essentially taking care of the horse. So daycare and horse board.

are kind of too large fixed expenses outside of our kind of general living like mortgage, utilities, internet, cell phone. So that's one of the reasons we have

Zach Whelchel (06:19)
Yeah, so you gotta have somebody to take care of your child and somebody to take care of your horse. And those two things are pretty expensive. So horse board, I'm assuming that means that your horse is boarded somewhere else. So I'm curious, how far that works. How far away is the horse? Do you have to drive out of town to visit him? What does that kind of

Nick Smith (06:24)
Yes. That's correct.

Yeah, so my wife drives about 50 miles one way to see the horse. So it's about an hour and a half south of us. And you'll see that a little bit later on when we get to the gas for car.

Zach Whelchel (06:43)
Wow, okay.

Okay. And so she tries to prioritize doing that. said about like two times a week. Is that right? Cool. And when she goes out there, I'm just curious, is she like actually like riding the horse or is it just like kind of more of like a, like the connection and like keeping in touch with

Nick Smith (07:05)
Yeah, so she's owned the horse for almost two years and she's working with the horse to learn certain things related to area of equestrians called jumpers or hunters. I probably got it wrong. Hunters, where they are the horses that jump over poles during shows and are kind of riding around the ring, jumping fences and whatnot. it's called hunters.

Zach Whelchel (07:18)
Okay. Okay.

We

Nick Smith (07:34)
So essentially she's training the horse. So each time she goes out, she works with him on a certain piece of, you know, kind of learning how to successfully jump over the poles and be able to be a successful rider. So he's very young. So she's working with him incrementally over time every time she goes out to teach him skills.

Zach Whelchel (07:59)
That's cool. Yeah. Um, my, have two sons and I've been teaching them about the Olympics coming up. Right. So we've been, printed out all the different icons of the different like sporting events and whatever. there's like, three or four that are horse related. we've been kind of watching videos and trying to teach them about that. So that's cool that your wife gets to do that. Um, awesome. Okay. Let's, let's talk about some of these numbers here. So mortgage you have redacted utilities you have at one 56 34. Um, that seems.

Nick Smith (08:16)
Yeah, yep, she enjoys it a

Zach Whelchel (08:28)
low to me? Is that for all of your utilities?

Nick Smith (08:31)
Yes, so where I am in the country, the May -June time frame is really nice. So our air conditioning doesn't run a whole lot, our heating doesn't run a whole lot, and then we also have gas. So that would be electric and gas.

Zach Whelchel (08:48)
Okay. Another, another clue about where you live. It's not super, super hot. It sounds like, internet. You got

Nick Smith (08:54)
At least not in June. It's been recently, but...

Zach Whelchel (08:58)
Sure, sure. Internet, you've got at $79 .99. Cell phone, you have at $235 .71. And then water, you have at $75, but that's quarterly. So is that like your waste water or is that like actually water, water?

Nick Smith (09:15)
That's water, water. Yep. So we set aside for every month so that we can pay the quarterly bill.

Zach Whelchel (09:17)
Okay.

Okay, cool. So daycare horse board, talked about allied lending HVAC. So it looks like you might have some sort of payment plan on an HVAC system.

Nick Smith (09:31)
Yeah, so we decided to get a 0 % interest 18 month loan because we needed an all new furnace and AC compressor last year. So we have about seven months left and zero base budgeting, it really allowed us to find how much we could afford with that payment.

And we were able to successfully find a sizable percentage of our monthly budget to be able to do the 0 % interest and be confident that we can pay it off in full. So we are on a payment plan to pay it off in full prior to interest being accrued, which is great. And zero -based budgeting allowed us to do that because we were able to look at the rest of our spending and change our prioritization.

Zach Whelchel (10:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that because a lot of people will take those kind of introductory offers, which are good for you if you pay it off in the period, right? And then usually the rate ramps up after that. A lot of people don't have really have a plan to make sure that they pay it off in time. But if you zero based budget, and if you have like this, control of your cashflow, then like you can be one of those people that takes the 18 month 0 % and really takes advantage of it. So that's, that's awesome to see that you guys are, kind of taking advantage of the good side of those offers.

Nick Smith (10:51)
Yeah, because for me, I try to not liquidate large amounts of money if we don't really have a need. And so with the 0 % interest offer, why not let's do that versus liquidating a huge chunk of money to be able to pay for it all at once.

Zach Whelchel (11:08)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, cool. Next up, we've got white student loans. So that one's at 543 .82. So I'm curious, you know, how far are you into these loans? What are your interest rates look like? Is this something that you're trying to like aggressively pay down or the interest rates low enough that you're like, ah, it's fine compared to inflation these days.

Nick Smith (11:29)
So my wife actually works for an employer that is eligible for the student loan forgiveness program. So we

Zach Whelchel (11:35)
Nice. How much longer do you guys have until that falls off? No way. Okay, congrats.

Nick Smith (11:39)
She has less than a year. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. So we are paying the minimum. We've been paying that for a long time. And so we are excited to have that go away in the next 12 months.

Zach Whelchel (11:55)
Yeah, that's awesome. I've got some friends who have chosen similar like paths of where they work based on student loan forgiveness, but they've still got, you know, some years until until that happens. So that's awesome that you guys are almost there. Um, okay, cool. Next up we got sleep number bed at one 12. So looks like this is another one of those kinds of payment plans on a large purchase.

Nick Smith (12:15)
Yeah, so we are two very different sleepers. And so we have gone through what I'll say is quite the discussion over the years of which bed works for both of us. And eventually we decided to break down and get a sleep number and it's changed our lives really. I sleep so well, she sleeps so well. We are on the polar opposites of firmness level. And so that allows

Zach Whelchel (12:37)
No way.

Okay.

Nick Smith (12:45)
So a sleep number allows us to set it to exactly what we want.

Zach Whelchel (12:50)
Okay. And this might be a little bit too personal, but are you willing to disclose what your, what your number is?

Nick Smith (12:56)
My number is 92 on a firmness.

Zach Whelchel (12:58)
92, okay, and does that mean super firm or super soft? Okay, okay, all right, cool, yeah, I

Nick Smith (13:02)
Super firm. Yep. And my wife says on the polar opposite of that. Hers is like a cloud.

Zach Whelchel (13:12)
Okay, well I just want to say it's impressive that you're sleeping at all if you also have daycare, right? So I'm presuming you have a little one running around. So if you're sleeping at all, then that's pretty good.

Nick Smith (13:17)
Hahaha

We have a human 6 a .m. alarm clock.

Zach Whelchel (13:25)
Oh man, yeah, that's, yeah, we have a three year old and a two year old and somehow we are lucky in the sense that they don't wake us up at 6 a .m. They keep us up at night though, so guess there's trade -offs both ways. Okay, cool, so next up you've got a Sorrento payment. I'm not sure what a Sorrento is, but it's 135 .90.

Nick Smith (13:45)
Yes.

Yeah, so it's a mid -size SUV. So prior to my son being born, my wife and I were really intentional about looking at our monthly cash flow, because we knew we would need to pay for daycare in the future. And so what we did is we put a sizable down payment, about 70 % of the car loan, down at the time we bought

Zach Whelchel (13:51)
okay.

Nick Smith (14:12)
so that we would minimize our monthly expenses, knowing that we would have additional expenses coming up for daycare and also taking care of a child, which was not part of our budget at the time that we were looking at buying a car. So it came shortly thereafter he was born and it's a Kia Sorento. I love it. Yeah. I would highly recommend them.

Zach Whelchel (14:33)
Okay, cool. 70 % down is a lot, lots of, lots of it's down. So that's

Nick Smith (14:39)
Yep, yep, yeah, we were in a position where we were able to have some liquidity available at the time and we were trying to minimize our monthly cash flow.

Zach Whelchel (14:52)
Cool. All right. Well, next up you've got auto and home insurance at 122 .25. So do not bundle your home insurance in your mortgage. You've got it kind of out outside of your mortgage.

Nick Smith (15:03)
Yeah, so the auto insurance is pretty inexpensive because outside of the Sorento, my two other cars are over 15 years old. So that's not really a huge expense for us. And that actually does include our homeowners insurance.

Zach Whelchel (15:14)
Thanks.

Okay, cool. So you pay those, do you pay those monthly or do you save up? that like a savings builder towards?

Nick Smith (15:23)
So we do bundle them with the same company.

We play we pay it monthly. Yeah

Zach Whelchel (15:32)
Okay, cool. Harvey Insurance is next for $66 .40.

Nick Smith (15:39)
Yes, we have a dog and he is a little bit of a flight risk and will just run away out of nowhere. He's now almost 11, but he still acts like he's a three year old dog. So the insurance is to make sure that if anything were to happen to him or, you know, he's, yeah, it's just to protect us financially because pet surgery.

Zach Whelchel (15:41)
Okay, Harvey is your dog, okay.

Okay.

Nick Smith (16:07)
pet expenses can be thousands of dollars out of nowhere. So we pay that minimal amount each month so that we don't have a vet bill.

Zach Whelchel (16:11)
Okay.

Nice, okay, so this works just kind of, I haven't done pet insurance before, I imagine it's similar to like human insurance, so might be like a deductible, but it covers up to a certain amount, those types of things.

Nick Smith (16:28)
That's exactly right. Yeah, actually he had a cancer risk a few months back. So we were able to have the part along his ear removed so that we wouldn't have him be at risk for cancer. And so that was a pretty expensive surgery. So the insurance covered a large portion of

Zach Whelchel (16:47)
Cool, yeah that's awesome. Alright, next up you got your son, 529, and these numbers are redacted. I'm assuming this is the college fund that you set up for your son.

Nick Smith (16:56)
Yeah, we redacted them because we kind of change from month to month. If we have a little bit extra cash flow, we'll throw some more in. If it's a little less, we'll kind of, like we have a base level that we save, but it kind of fluctuates.

Zach Whelchel (17:09)
Cool, and I'm curious, because the 529, they just opened it up recently to where you can use it for private schooling in grade school as well. Do you guys intend to use this money just for college, or do you intend to start using it for your son kind of along the way, or have you even decided

Nick Smith (17:24)
Yeah, we're not quite sure. We're very fortunate to live in a neighborhood that actually has a local school. So our thought is, is that post daycare he would go to that school. So we wouldn't be using it necessarily in the next few years. But as far as his secondary schooling, we're still not quite sure which school he may go to. But the financial side of me wants to make sure that we can allow compound interest to grow.

Zach Whelchel (17:31)
Cool

Nick Smith (17:53)
not looking to try to take too much too early.

Zach Whelchel (17:56)
Sure, yeah, that's great. Okay, next up you got life insurances at 481. So I'm curious like what your breakdown is here. Like did you guys choose term or whole and do you have it on both of you or how does that

Nick Smith (18:10)
Yeah, we have a pretty robust life insurance structure. So each my wife and I, we have two separate term life policies where one is 20 years and then one is 30 years. And the idea being that for 20 years, it needs to be a little bit higher so that if one of us passes, the other one has support for our son before they're able to be, before he's able to be on his

Zach Whelchel (18:20)
Okay.

Nick Smith (18:38)
And then the 30 year one is more of a minimal value just to get us through working essentially. And so in addition, we have two other policies. We have small amounts of variable universal life that we use as another type of investment. So it's not just the premium, it's also premium plus investments that we're doing every month. And then our son has one for himself as well.

where it's a small death benefit, but then it's a variable universal life, so we're investing in it as well. So they're more like wealth creation outside of the minimal term life insurance policies.

Zach Whelchel (19:12)
Yeah

Sure, and then the 20 and the 30 years means within the 20 year period you're kind of stacking both the 20 and the 30, right? So both of those, yeah, yeah. Cool, okay. Next up we've got wife Jim at $25 .05. That seems like a pretty cheap gym.

Nick Smith (19:36)
Yeah, it's a Planet Fitness right down the road. So it doesn't include a trainer or anything like that, but she enjoys going and has her be able to get out of the house.

Zach Whelchel (19:39)
Nice.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, especially when you have kids. Gyms are nice as a retreat to go take care of yourself. So cool. Okay, so next we have active pest control at 150. So I'm curious if there's a history behind pest control here.

Nick Smith (20:05)
Yeah, so we live in a older house. It was built in the late 60s and there's a lot of wood on our property. So we have many, many trees. And when we first moved in, we wanted to be sure that we could have certainty that our house isn't going to get eroded away by pets and insects. So we have a pest control service that comes once a quarter.

and they spray all around our property, the perimeter of our house, and also inside the house to just kind of keep the critters away. Because we also have a walkout basement, so a lot of spiders, lot of ants, that type of thing can easily come

Zach Whelchel (20:49)
Nice. Okay. Might be another clue as to what area of the country you're in. Um, all right. So that's it for the fixed expenses. Um, so let's move on to the flexible expenses. And you've got to note here that flexible represents about 30 % of your budget. So we'll just dive into each of these. The first one is Amazon and Amazon is redacted. um, that's, uh, you know, the Amazon is usually a, I feel like a large expense for a lot of American families these days, but you also have shopping at stores and then grocery stores.

As far as like, um, know, shopping, go shopping and stores, have it $90 and 99 cents and grocery stores. have it five 55 99. So any, anything you want to share on kind of the shopping triple

Nick Smith (21:32)
Yeah, so we have groceries delivered mainly and it's a couple reasons. One, we're in an area of the country where Whole Foods and Amazon deliver very easily to our neighborhood. And the other piece is we find ourselves when we're in stores picking up things we don't really need and especially for me, snacks. I love snacks.

Zach Whelchel (21:51)
Mmm.

Nick Smith (21:55)
If I'm not going to a grocery store, I'm far less likely to come home with a bag of chips or a ton of crackers or something like that. So we actually have a lot of our groceries delivered. So Amazon is groceries, personal items, home maintenance, sometimes clothing, stuff for my son. So it's, it's really a catch all. We try to set a goal for ourselves each month on how much we can spend on Amazon. And so that includes a lot of varying things,

certainly month to month it can be a little more variable. As far as grocery stores goes, that one's a little bit miscategorized because in June it was when all of the farmers markets kind of restarted. So a big portion of that is we shifted away from ordering as many groceries online and we shifted to more shopping at farmers markets. So that's one of the reasons it's kind of so high. Usually it's about a third of that in the winter time.

Zach Whelchel (22:51)
Cool. Dining out next we have at $7 .38 .93. Anything to share on that one?

Nick Smith (23:00)
Yeah, well June was my birthday month, so I was feeling a little more free with going out and lunches and whatnot. And then also the, well we'll see it a little bit later, but we actually have a pool. And so part of dining out is having friends come over, ordering pizza, or having some food delivered so that we can all have a nice time in the backyard.

Zach Whelchel (23:25)
Nice, that's great. Yeah, my wife and I do like a, separate our food into social sharing for those situations. I've seen some people that'll separate dining out into a couple different categories for those situations where you're sharing it, but it looks like you just kind of group all that together there. Yeah, do you have any thoughts?

Nick Smith (23:45)
Yeah, I try to keep my categories kind of like minimal. Definitely there's, you know, thoughts like that that you can split them out. But for me, like the difference isn't really big enough to have to like split out the category. It just kind of fluctuates based on which type of dining out we're doing, right? So this month is our anniversary month. So a sizable portion of our dining out will be a nice anniversary dinner. So it's just kind of like,

Again, zero base allows us to talk about like how do we want to spend our dining out budget this

Zach Whelchel (24:18)
Yeah, for sure. So you had your birthday last month, you have your anniversary this month. I'm curious, are you one of those people where your birthday is like a month long celebration or is it like a week long celebration or is it like a day long celebration?

Nick Smith (24:34)
Yeah, well this year my wife did something amazing. She surprised me with a surprise birthday party at our house and I was absolutely shocked. And so that was a lot of fun and we were able to celebrate over a couple days with some family that was in town as well. But generally it's not a week, but I can be a little persickety about asking for things around the birthday, right? Like, could you put...

Zach Whelchel (24:42)
notes.

Nick Smith (25:03)
my son to bed a few more times, it's my birthday, know, right? Like, kind of playing that card. But when it comes to the monetary side, generally we do like one big thing and then that's really

Zach Whelchel (25:06)
Yes, yes. It just kinda

Yeah, it just kind of creeps a little more and more. my wife is at the point where, know, October 1st, you know, her birthday is not still what the 29th, but October 1st. It's like, well, it's my birthday month. So we kind of make a big deal out of it at this point. But cool. Okay. So next you've got gas for car, which is 414 .94. And you had spoken about your wife traveling kind of these long distances. So I'm assuming that that takes a large portion of the gas costs

Nick Smith (25:28)
Exactly.

Yeah, I personally only drive about 10 to 15 miles per week. So I'm maybe $50 of that 400. My wife drives to and from work and then she also goes and visits the horse. So big portion of that is all the miles she's driving.

Zach Whelchel (25:51)
Okay

Got it. Cool. All right. Subscriptions. Next we got that is redacted. And then I'm just going go through a couple of these and I'll just let you kind of speak to any of them that have kind of stories behind them. It looks like you've got vacation at 65 a month, babysitter at 175 a month, fun money at 21 a month, horse expenses at 52 and pet supplies at 245 .63. So just kind of give you a group there and I'll let you kind of pick any interesting stories or thoughts.

in

Nick Smith (26:31)
Yeah, so this part of our budget moves almost on a weekly basis, right? So sometimes fun money is hundreds of dollars, other times it's only 20. And so in this instance, we had to really peel back on the kind of fun money, which is usually like drinks out, right? Or kind of entertainment type things, because our dog is getting older and had some situations with his stomach. I won't get into it.

but we now have to buy him prescription food. So the month of June, I actually bought three separate 30 pound bags of food because I was trying to figure out which food he wanted and I thought I bought the right one. So anyways, the pet supplies was far higher than we had intended. So we had to kind of peel back on other things. And then the lunch is out. You can see was high for my birthday and just kind of enjoying going out to lunch here and there more so than we normally do.

Zach Whelchel (27:32)
Cool. Yeah, but it's cool that we can already see kind of like, you know, you're shifting priorities like in a month, you know, if your, if your dog has more needs, you guys kind of come together and say, okay, well let's pull it from here and put it there. Let's pull it from here and put it there. Right. So this kind of zero -based budget that you keep allows you to react in real time as your priorities are shifting in real time. So that's, that's really encouraging to see.

A lot of people, when things come up, it's just like, Oh no, what do we do? But with you guys, you're able to have a plan and able to pull from specific areas. So love, love to see that. Um, okay. Next up we've got parking lunches out clothing, dry cleaning, sun's expenses. So parking is at one 59 94 lunches are at three 50 26 clothing is at one 41 95 and sun's expenses are at 80 74.

Nick Smith (28:26)
Yeah, so for parking, we live near a city and when my wife drives into work, it's about 25 to $30 each day to park. Now she does have a parking pass that has kind of been gifted to her from a coworker, so she tries to use that, but sometimes she has to share the parking pass, so sometimes she's not able to use it. But yeah, that's kind of where parking's coming from.

Zach Whelchel (28:37)
Wow, okay.

Nick Smith (28:51)
And also part of it was I flew for a family event in June. So that was also some airport parking.

Zach Whelchel (29:00)
Got it. Okay, cool. And then lunches out. So how do you categorize lunches out compared to dining out or why do you guys have those as like separate categories?

Nick Smith (29:08)
Yeah, I have a whole methodology here. anything that is not a restaurant or like us going out together is lunches out. So Starbucks is lunches out. If we're swinging by like a gas station or a Wawa or something like that and picking up a quick food or snack, that's all lunches out. And then also when we actually go out to lunch individually.

Zach Whelchel (29:11)
Okay.

Okay.

Nick Smith (29:38)
I do a treat myself when I go into work. I go into work only once a week. I'm very fortunate. I only have to go in once a week. And when I go in, I decide to get some lunch. So that's about $20 to $25 each time, each week. So that's part of it. And then my wife also sometimes buys lunch as well.

Zach Whelchel (30:00)
Cool, and for the keen listeners out there, he just said wah -wah, which I believe is only available in the north, or at least north of me. I'm in Kentucky and we don't have wah -wah yet. So that might be a hint right there.

Nick Smith (30:05)
Ha ha ha

Zach Whelchel (30:14)
All right, so next up we've got a category called Nick Savings, and this is at $100 right now. So is this kind of representing where you kind of pull off some into your kind of separate account like we talked about earlier?

Nick Smith (30:27)
Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, I give myself $50 a paycheck to be able to accumulate for savings for gifts or other things that I kind of want to do on my own.

Zach Whelchel (30:38)
Okay, yeah, it's always hard to buy gifts.

Nick Smith (30:40)
it's my actually it's my fantasy football fees each year as well. Okay.

Zach Whelchel (30:43)
wow, okay wait, gotta know more about this because I'm in a league as well. Do you guys have a large buy -in or how does that

Nick Smith (30:52)
Yeah, so I'm in three separate leagues and the total of the fees is about $200.

Zach Whelchel (30:59)
Okay, and how much have you, what's been the return on investment on this? How many years have you won?

Nick Smith (31:02)
gosh, I should have known you were gonna ask that when I brought it up. Not great. I've gotten a second place once or twice, but never a first.

Zach Whelchel (31:13)
Okay, okay.

Do you guys do a dynasty league or is it a redraft each

Nick Smith (31:21)
It's a redraft each year,

Zach Whelchel (31:23)
Okay, and then do you do snake draft or you guys do the auction?

Nick Smith (31:27)
Snake, yeah. Yep.

Zach Whelchel (31:28)
Okay. You should try auction. We switched to auction and it's, it's been a game changer. We love

Nick Smith (31:34)
okay. Yeah, I'll have to talk to the commissioner. I am just a league team. I'm not the commissioner of a league. That's way too much pressure for me.

Zach Whelchel (31:43)
Got it. Yeah, we have a very brutal fantasy. I was the commissioner one year and I got effectively cued halfway through the year. They voted me out of power and replaced me. So that was quite the drama. All right. So let's keep going here. You've got charity and savings and an unplanned next to wrap out your flexible and charity and savings are both redacted. But is there anything you want to kind of share about those?

Nick Smith (31:50)
wow.

Ha

Yeah, charity, we're really trying to give a little bit each month to the church that we go to. And then savings is pretty variable. It depends on kind of what's going on that month, if we have anything left over. So as I mentioned, we have a whole financial infrastructure outside of just this budget. So savings isn't really something that necessarily we have to be diligent about because we do have other liquidity in other places.

Zach Whelchel (32:19)
Okay.

Nick Smith (32:40)
It is something that we try to keep top of mind and if we want to use some extra money that's available that month, you know, we can put it in the savings.

Zach Whelchel (32:51)
Cool. And then do you have kind of like a set place where that goes as far as like, you know, percentage goes on the market, a percentage goes on, or is it kind of like you make the choice with the extra money each month, like kind of in the moment? Like, I'm just curious if you have like a set place where that savings ends up going, not that you need to say what it is, but do you have a plan for it essentially?

Nick Smith (33:11)
It generally just sits in the budget and then we just see if we need it for something and then if it gets to a certain amount, we'll transfer it to our actual joint savings account that we

Zach Whelchel (33:13)
Okay.

Cool. Okay. Cool. All right. Well, we are down to your last kind of category group, which is the non -monthly. You've got a note on here that says that this is about 10 % of your monthly budget. So I'll run through a couple of these and let you talk about any that are interesting to you. There's one that has like a special little emoji that I'm looking forward to down here. But we'll start with pool maintenance, Christmas, vet visits, gifts, and medical.

Nick Smith (33:49)
Yeah, so as you can see in June, that was the vet visit that I was referencing.

Zach Whelchel (33:54)
Yep. So bet visits is at four 62 97. And yeah, I'd assume that this is from kind of the recent complications you'll

Nick Smith (34:03)
Right, yep, yeah. So we had to make sure to find money for that. And so the other kind of things like Christmas gifts. So this non -monthly section, the way we look at it is it's with a lot of intentionality. So if we have something going on very specifically, then we'll pull money from a bunch of different categories to pull it all into just that

Zach Whelchel (34:30)
Got it, okay. Cool.

Nick Smith (34:31)
And then, yeah, and then we're fortunate where we have what I like to call third paycheck months, where we are paid every two weeks. And so twice a year, we each have a third paycheck for the month. And that's usually where those go to the non -monthly. So that's generally when we kind of fill all these back up and then we're intentional about how we want to use them over

Zach Whelchel (34:56)
Cool, okay yeah, so you have kind of a cadence for when these kind of envelopes get filled up and then you know that it'll be there. Okay cool, so next up is an interesting one. We've got home maintenance. It's at 3 ,234 .74 cents and you've got an extra little shower head emoji in here. So I'm assuming something broke in a shower, is that right?

Nick Smith (35:16)
Well, so we're doing a bathroom refresh. So the bathroom my son and I share, we have been talking about it for the last couple of weeks. And so we've been shifting some money around. And so we've been accumulating in this line item, which is another great thing about using the budgeting software is we don't have to do a ton of mental math. We're able to open up the budget and be like, okay, we still need to find a little bit more to be able to achieve our goals of what we're looking to do. So it's not a full bathroom remodel.

Zach Whelchel (35:19)
There it is, okay.

Nick Smith (35:46)
We're calling it a refresh, that's actually happening next week. So it's great to have the money set aside in advance.

Zach Whelchel (35:50)
Cool, and when you say...

And when you say we've been talking about it, this is like you and your son that have been talking about it, right? Okay.

Nick Smith (35:58)
so actually I have been using the phrase glow up. I'm like, you know, your bathroom's gonna get a glow up next week. And he's like, what's a glow off? So that's had some interesting conversations about what a glow up is, but yeah.

Zach Whelchel (36:11)
Yeah. Yeah. just have, I'm just envisioning your, your, you know, toddler son coming up to you and saying, we need to have a talk about, about upping, upping our shared bathroom.

Nick Smith (36:21)
Yeah, my family is coming for a week in a couple weeks, so we're trying to spruce up the house a little bit before

Zach Whelchel (36:29)
Nice. And it looks like you spent in this month, $209 and 88 cents in that category. You still have, you know, 3 ,146, oh eight. So it's kind of cool that you, know, how to some you're spending from it along the way. And that kind of rolls over so you can kind of keep track of, know, how much you'd put in it and how much you have left in that total budget line.

Nick Smith (36:49)
Yeah, yeah, it's really nice because we're buying all the fixtures ourselves and then we're paying a contractor to do the work. So we're able to keep track of how much our fixtures are costing separately from how much we've already agreed to pay the contractor.

Zach Whelchel (37:04)
Cool, that's great. Alright, next up you've got two different categories. The first one is Nick and son hair and the second one is wife hair. So, looks like your wife gets her own hair category and you and your son have a shared one. I'm curious what the story is there.

Nick Smith (37:19)
Yeah, so my son and I's hair, we actually get it cut together. We go to the same place. It's actually the same hairstylist that I have been going to for over 10 years myself. And so he sits on my lap and watches YouTube videos while he gets his haircut. And then I am able to chat with the stylist. And then after we both get our haircuts done, we go to a playground right nearby. And it's fun because I drive back into the city.

Zach Whelchel (37:31)
Wow, okay.

Thanks.

Nick Smith (37:48)
that I used to live in long, long, long ago, earlier days of my life. So it's a nice Saturday,

Zach Whelchel (37:54)
That's cool. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So you and your sons is at 90, your wife's is at 75. So your wife, I'm assuming goes to a different place then.

Nick Smith (38:05)
Yeah, she goes to a salon, it's not as often, but we like to set aside for it every month so that she's able to not have any stress when she decides to go do her hair. You know, it's not like we have to find X amount for her to be able to do it.

Zach Whelchel (38:16)
Yes.

Yeah, my wife has like really curly hair and she goes to like this special person who's certified in like curly hair or something and it's always more expensive so we kind of save up for that as well. I know what that looks like. Okay, cool.

Nick Smith (38:23)
It's already in there.

Yeah, so it's a way to lower stress, right? So if we always have a little bit of money sitting there, then she can go and do her hair when she chooses. And it's not a big thing that is where, how are we going to find the money? That type

Zach Whelchel (38:53)
for Yeah, that's great that you pre plan for for all of these expenses. Okay, we've got a couple more categories left here. I'm just going to go through these. We've got home cleaning, car property taxes, car maintenance, taxes, lawn maintenance and contest. The only one that has a dollar amount is a lawn maintenance at $100 and then the contest it looks like you spent 4842 on so any stories in

Nick Smith (39:20)
Yeah, so home cleaning, we have a service come in about once a quarter or so. So this month we didn't have it, so that's why there's nothing there. The lawn maintenance, we have a lawn service that comes each week. Our lawn is pretty gnarly. It's about two thirds of an acre, but it's a very steep hill down to the road that our property is up against.

I luckily don't need to do that myself and so we kind of employ a local company to help us out with that. And truthfully they only go down to the bottom of the hill once a month because it is so steep. Generally they just kind of stay at the top of the property each week. And then contest. So out of nowhere we have charges that are unrecognized and so I'm currently in the phase of working with

Zach Whelchel (40:11)
Aha!

Nick Smith (40:14)
merchant to have those removed.

Zach Whelchel (40:17)
Now, were these on a credit card or a debit card? Okay, so you have more kind of ability to fight back, I guess, if it's on a credit card, because there's kind of protections built in.

Nick Smith (40:20)
It was a credit

Definitely. Yeah, so I'm working with the merchant right now. So it wasn't like it was a lost card. It didn't seem like the card was stolen. It was more just very specific recurring charges from one vendor. So I contacted that vendor and they're actively looking into it. So it didn't seem like something we would need to fund if it's all gonna be returned.

Zach Whelchel (40:44)
Cool, yeah, and this is another.

And this is another great benefit of budgeting, right? It's like you have your eye on the transactions that are coming through and if something seems off, you can actually take action on it instead of just kind of losing it passively without knowing.

Nick Smith (41:01)
Yeah, the approving every expense is really what keeps you aware because the charges weren't much. As you can see, it was only about 40 bucks. But the fact that we are looking at every single transaction that comes in and categorizing it, I had to add a contest category. I never had that before, but there it is.

Zach Whelchel (41:21)
Cool. All right, well that's the last line item on your budget. So we've officially reached the point of the show where you are allowed to actually introduce yourself. So if you don't mind, you know, telling us your name, maybe kind of the area you live, what you do, those types of things. We'd love to kind of learn the bits about you that we missed from your money.

Nick Smith (41:40)
All right, well, my name's Nick Smith. I live in the Washington DC region and I am a full -time customer service manager for my full -time job. And then for my part -time job, I have a financial coaching business that's called Personal Wealth Adventures where I coach clients and assist them in their cashflow management needs. And actually I'm also a launched coach that is available on my budget coach.

And so I've worked with some clients with my budget coach as well. And finally, I'm actually a coach trainer that is employed by my budget coach. And I really enjoy working with prospective financial coaches and having them be launched on the my budget coach platform. So for everyone out there, Zach's my boss.

Zach Whelchel (42:31)
Yeah, I had to pretend I didn't know too much about you, but yes. So Nick is a coach trainer for my budget coach. So he helps other coaches kind of learn how they can coach on the platform. And he also is a coach himself. So Nick lives in the budgeting world in a lot of ways, right? He manages his own budget. He teaches others to manage their budget and he teaches coaches to teach others to manage their budget. So Nick is definitely a great source if you are looking for somebody to

kind of learning how to budget from. yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap it up here and say, you know, Nick, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing a lot of your numbers. And if you are a listener who is looking to kind of start your own budget, similar to how Nick shared his, course, with your own priorities and your own numbers, my budget coach is kind of the best place to start building that budget and also building it kind of in tandem with a coach who's there to give you kind of the guidance and the encouragement that you need.

So thanks again, Nick, for being on the show and we'll see you all next

Nick Smith (43:35)
Thanks so much for having me, Zach.